The European Commission unveiled a plan on Tuesday to drop the EU’s effective ban on new combustion-engine cars from 2035 after pressure from the region’s auto sector, marking the bloc’s biggest retreat from its green policies in recent years.
The move, which still needs approval from EU governments and the European Parliament, would allow continued sales of some non-electric vehicles. Carmakers in regional industrial powerhouse Germany and in Italy had sought easing of the rules.
The EU executive appears to have bowed to calls from carmakers to keep selling plug-in hybrids and range extenders that burn fuel as they struggle to compete against Tesla, opens new tab and Chinese electric vehicle makers.
I think this is the difference between opening doors to the future vs closing doors to the past. When China funded EVs and battery research, they opened the door to the future. When the EU and US try to ban gas engines, they are trying to close the door to the past. Guess which one works.
Yeah, EVs will naturally take over the market as they become more desirable/affordable. Meanwhile, if anything, banning ICE cars will make personal cars even more of a luxury.
Why would it be more of a luxury? Fuel and maintenance should be cheaper, and with proper investments the cars should be cheaper as well. A lot of the battery research right now is showing batteries that could last say 1,000,000 miles. If you get decent standards for such, you could have parents getting a new car and moving their old battery into a cheap EV for their teenager. If it had 200,000 miles on it, they can keep moving it to their next vehicle, and next vehicle if they keep wanting to get new features. The average American drives 14,000 miles a year. In theory they can pass that battery down to their teenager as well, but at that point it’s probably better to just recycle it or use it as a backup generator for the home.
Making repairable, recyclable, reusable batteries takes one of the largest costs down by a long shot.
Notre; Obviously batteries don’t last miles, but for sake of this discussion it made sense to put it this way
But in much of the EU, electricity is expensive.
I had an EV for a while (tons of people have company cars in Belgium) and charging it at a fast charging station costs like 10% more per km than gas. A regular charging station is very slightly cheaper.
Charging at home used to be cheaper, but now energy companies charge a fee for “peak energy usage” that is more than 15 minutes, so if you charge your car at 11kW at home once in a month, you will get an extra fee on your 250€/month energy bill of 50€.
I am interested in that battery research though, because charge-cycle wise, only lithium iron phosphate subsection of EV battery chemistry would last even near that long. Lithium ion only lasts 500 cycles before degrading to 70% and LiPo is only 1000. My ID4 could do 420 km on a charge, assuming a LiPo composition, that is 420k kilometers, which is a quarter of what you say. That said, that is a pretty long lifetime for a car. Especially because all of the sensor systems would break down or be remotely disabled to force you to buy new ones long before then.
Pretty much everything about an EV can be made to last a milloin miles. Electric motors are rodust, they don’t wear out like ICE engines. No transmission to wear out. Suspension parts can be replaced. You’re pretty much down to rust.
I was thinking about the thing in terms of current purchase costs. Right now there’s a sizeable gap between prices of ICE cars and EVs in the same vehicle category.
That gap will of course get smaller over time.
Which is exactly why the ruling capitalist class is trying so hard to not let that happen. Must consume. Line must go up.
It just means the ruling class made investments in things they haven’t figured out how to capitalize on quickly yet. Really they should be able to switch quickly and drive the market… But propaganda is shackling them to stupidity.
There are very few rich people in the U.S., there are far fewer smart rich people’s in the U.S.